ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT

WHAT IS ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT?

An environmental audit is defined as a systematic and objective

assessment of the environmental performance of an organization, site,
process, or project.

FOR ARTHUR D. LITTLE

« An Environmental audit is a systematic, objective method of reviewing

management systems and controls and verifying that environmental
standards regulatory, company, and good industry standards are being
met. »

MORE SPECIFICALLY

“Environmental Audit” is a management tool comprising a systematic,

documented, periodic, and objective evaluation of how well the pollution
control and environmental management systems are performing with the
aim of:

o Achieving waste prevention through reduction, reuse, and recycle

o Assessing compliance with environmental regulatory requirements
o Facilitating control of environmental practices by a company’s
management

WHY ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT?

The “Environment Audit” tool is proposed to be introduced as a proactive

and facilitator tool for the benefit of the industries. The tool provides early
warning to the industries on environmental noncompliance to enable them
to take timely corrective measures. The tool is perceived to benefit both
the “industry” and “environment

BASELINE OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT

For environmental manager, environmental audit is a is a key tool because
it is a process of extracting information about the company that, when
analyzed, will provide a realistic assessment of how the company affects
the environment and will also provide a set of environmental objectives
and targets to reduce the effects.

The establishment of objectives and targets form the basis of corporate

environmental plan.

Environmental audits should answer the following questions:

COMPLIANCE

- What are we doing? (are we in compliance with local regulations,

guidelines and permit condition?)

EFFICACITY

- Can we do it better? (are there nonregulated areas where operations

can be improved to minimize the negative environmental impact?)

EFFICIENCY

- Can we do it more cheaply? (While keeping the same environmental

performance, is there a way to reduce costs?)

TYPES AND FORMS OF AUDIT

TYPES OF AUDIT

We have two (02) types of audit: internal audit, external audit and audit of
certification.

INTERNAL AUDIT

Internal audit is initiated by management to assess internal

operations and ensure alignment with established objectives. These
audits may be conducted internally or outsourced to external
experts, as deemed necessary. The primary goal is to improve
internal processes, evaluate risks, and strengthen internal controls.

EXTERNAL AUDIT
 External audit is commissioned by external stakeholders, such as
certification bodies, regulatory agencies, or clients, to evaluate an
organization's environmental performance. Conducted by
independent auditors, these audits provide assurance on compliance
with environmental regulations and the organization's environmental
stewardship.
Second-Party audit is an external audit conducted by clients or
business partner of a given company.
Third-Party Audit is external audit conducted by regulators or
certification bodies.

FORMS OF ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT

This audit has many forms, classified in three (03) categories:

Liabilities Audit Management Audit Specialized Audit

Compliance audit Corporate audit Site audit
Waste management
Operational risk audit Systems audit
audit
Acquisition audit Policy audit Energy audit
HSE audit Issues audit Product audit

A liabilities audit is often conducted as a prelude to gaining

insurance coverage and as a means of demonstrating the regulatory
compliance.
Management audit pays considerable attention to management
systems as they are a guide to how effectively and efficiently the
operation runs.
Activities audit cover auditing of select technical and management
issues.

INITIAL ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT

How the environmental manager can use audit to set up the
environmental management system into the company?

To establish an effective Environmental Management System (EMS), a

thorough evaluation of an organization's environmental performance is
essential. This is where an Initial Environmental Audit (IEA) comes into
play. Conducted by environmental managers, an IEA provides a
comprehensive assessment of an organization's environmental footprint,
identifying areas for improvement and informing strategic environmental
decision-making.

DEFINITION OF IEA

We can define Initial Environmental Audit (IEA) as a comprehensive

assessment of an organization's environmental performance, identifying
areas of non-compliance, environmental risks, and opportunities for
improvement.

This audit thus provides a snapshot of the organization's environmental

footprint, helping to:

 Identify environmental liabilities and risks.

 Evaluate compliance with regulations and standards.
 Detect potential environmental hazards.
 Prioritize areas for improvement.
 Develop strategies for environmental management.

Any environmental management audit includes an analysis of external as

well as internal factors. External factors may arise from the environment,
customers and/or competition. They relate to circumstances that your
company cannot control directly and include broad factors such as the
economic, customer, competitor and operational policy.

You must also include a breakdown of internal factors and analyze the
resources and skills of your company, including any deficiencies or
weaknesses.

The first step is to list the key factors that the internal analysis might
encompass and then conduct an internal appraisal. The results of this
internal analysis will be used to form the basis of an aspects and impacts
analysis.
FACTORS IN INTERNAL APPRAISAL

Use your discretion and judgement in selecting areas to appraise, as the

most relevant internal factors will vary among industries, companies and
individual departments. A check-list of some of the factors and areas
which the internal part of the environmental management audit may
encompass includes the following.

FINANCIAL

- Liquidity.
- Profit margins.

It is prudent to check on the extent of the cost of implementation because

it will vary from company to company and from industry to industry sector.

PERSONNEL

- Managerial experience and expertise.

- Levels of training and education.
- Motivation and attitudes.
- Workforce skills.

There will probably be a quality health and safety or similar training

structure to which environmental training can be effectively added, saving
on company resources and minimizing operational disruption.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, AND DESIGN

- Budgets.
- Innovative success.
- Design expertise.
- Technological expertise.

Will environmental changes allow the opportunity of offering better

products to the market, or will a new, or modified, process offer additional
savings or an additional by-product?
ENGINEERING AND PRODUCTION

- Production planning and control systems.

- Degree of automation.
- Quality control procedures.
- Age profile of plant.
- Flexibility.
- Unit costs of production.
- Supply and procurement.

Focusing on the engineering and production activities of a company may

identify current and future challenges or present new opportunities.
Consider, for example, some of the following areas for investigation:
materials, components, and machines ; methods, systems ; design,
promotion, presentation ; changes in legislation

ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT

- Environmental research and information systems.

- Environmental planning systems.
- Staff attitudes.
- Company image.

While auditing the company, make a check for the existence of

environmental management skills and experience, taking note of any
environmental projects that the company or individual employees have
been involved with. Identifying those employees with relevant
environmental skills will help when recruiting a working group.

TECHNIQUES OF ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT

Whether you are part of an SME or larger company, there are many
techniques open to you for environmental assessment. Employee
interviews, focus groups (discussion groups) and questionnaires are three
of the more common and easier methods of gathering environmental
information. A combination of techniques can, of course, be used.

 Employee interviews.
 Focus groups.
 Employee survey.

FACTORS IN EXTERNAL APPRAISAL

ENVIRONMENTAL PRESSURE GROUPS

- Environmental authorities;
- Local pressure groups;
- Association of consumers.

CONSUMERS AND PARTNERS

- Economic growth;
- Interest rates;
- Exchange rates;
- Balance of payment levels;
- Employment;
- Credit policies;
- Taxation.

As consumer awareness grows of the environmental damage that can be

caused by industry, people are being drawn, mostly by an ethical view, to
purchase those products and services that are environmentally friendly, or
those that do less environmental damage than others.

Banks, financial institutions and various other company stakeholders are

becoming more environmentally aware about where they invest money.

COMPETITORS

- The changing age structure of the population;

- Trends in family size;
- Changes in amount and nature of leisure time;
- Changes in attitudes towards health and lifestyles;
- Changing work patterns;
- Equal opportunities;
- Culture.

Identifying and anticipating changing lifestyles, such as the increased

expenditure on organic food by environmentally conscious consumers,
adds value to producers’ products and services if they are in tune with
attitude changes. It is sometimes a great temptation for companies,
considering the immediate benefits of having a positive environmental
image, to cut short the process and simply to change labels on their
products and call them environmentally friendly.
TOOLS OF ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT

LIFE CYCLE ANALYSIS

Life cycle analysis (also known as life cycle assessment) is a

technique to assess environmental impacts associated with all the stages
of a product’s life from cradle-to-grave (i.e., from raw material extraction
through materials processing, manufacture, distribution, and use). These
better reflect the different stages of the process.

The life cycle analysis (LCA) method has a fixed structure and is practiced
according to international standards (ISO) 14040.

ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

Environmental performance indicators (EPIs) measure the current or

past environmental performance of an organization and compare it to the
targets set by the organization’s management.

One of the main strengths is the possible use for benchmarking within the
sector.

ASPECTS AND IMPACTS ANALYSIS

ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECT

Environmental aspect is an element of an organization’s activities,

products or services that can have a beneficial or adverse impact on the
environment

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

Environmental impact is the change that takes place in the environment

as a result of the aspect.

REGISTER OF ASPECTS AND IMPACTS

Item Activity Environmental Environmental Caused by Effect
aspect impact

IDENTIFYING POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE ASPECTS AND IMPACTS

When it has been established what the company does, all the activities
and processes should be listed and the list divided into three key areas.
First, those activities and processes that affect the environment during
normal operating procedures should be identified. Second, all those
activities and processes that affect the environment during abnormal
procedures should be identified; and, third, the same for incidents,
accidents and other emergencies.

- Normal operations: daily operational activities or processes that

are currently being carried out.
- Abnormal operations: periodic routines that may occur in addition
to the daily process and activities. These may include preventive
maintenance, plant upgrades, shutdowns or silent periods.
- Emergencies: at best, when the unexpected happens, this may be
a small, localized spill or breakdown.

Example:
ITEM ACTIVITY/SERVICE ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

NEGATIVE
POSITIVE/
01 Use of tinning powder Potential for spillage Possible atmospheric contamination Negative

Reuse of packaging material Conservation of natural resources Positive

02 Packaging

Plastic and metallic airborne fibers and dust Possible atmospheric pollution Negative
03 Engraving
Use of air compressor Noise pollution Negative

Use of fuel tank bund Possible soil and water contamination Negative
04 Heating oil storage

Recycle waste paper Conservation of natural resources Positive

05 Generation of waste paper

Exhaust emissions Atmospheric pollution Negative

06 Servicing of company cars

Use of energy GHG’s emissions Negative

07 Lighting
IMPACT AND ASPECT CLASSIFICATION
ratin Impact Impact criteria
g classification
No noticeable environmental effect effective
1 Minimal Effective control system already in place
Well within discharge consent levels
Low environmental effect
2 Low Substantial control measures in place to limit
impact
Known effect upon the environment
3 Moderate Limited measures in place to handle impact
Infrequent monitoring undertaken
Noticeable effect upon the environment
4 High Minimal measure in place to handle impact
Haphazard monitoring undertaken
Highly noticeable effect upon the environment
5 Major No measures in place to limit impact
No monitoring undertaken

ratin Aspect Aspect criteria

g classification
No emissions and no use of resources
1 Minimal
No hazardous material usage
Low emissions and low usage of resources
2 Low
Occasional use of hazardous materials
Moderate emissions and low use of resources
3 Moderate Moderate use of hazardous materials

High emissions and high use of resources

4 High
High use of hazardous materials
Major emissions and major use of resources
5 Major Major use of hazardous material

Calculating the levels of ‘low’, ‘occasional’, ‘moderate’, etc. will be an

assessment based on existing Environment Agency pollution acceptance
levels, your experience and the company size.
IMPACT RATING

The measurement criteria for each impact classification shown before will
help us to determine the power of impacts resulting from each
environmental aspect.

A simple formula for an aspect’s impact rating would be:

Impact rating = aspect weighting × impact weighting

To determine the impact rating of your process or activity, judgement

should be used initially to assess the level of resource used or the level of
emissions to the environment.

ASPECT AND IMPACT PROBABILITY MATRIX

To complete your toolbox for the matrix application, you will need to
assign some degree of probability to the likelihood of the aspects and
impacts occurring

The probability of occurrence can be measured from a score of 1 to score

of 5.

Score of occurrence’s Probability of occurrence (%)

probabilities
5 81 – 100
4 61 – 80
3 41 – 60
2 21 – 40
1 1 - 20
0.5 <1

The calculated probability of occurrence scores are transferred to the

potential aspect/impact/probability matrix.

BY multiplying together, the probability and impact scores, it is possible to

determine whether the aspect has significant environmental impact.
 Score of Potential impact score Total
occurrence’
Aspect s
probabilitie 5 4 3 2 1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5
s

Tanking
2 X -10
oil

Exhaust
5 X -10
fumes

Recycling
packagin 4 X 16
g

Chemical
5 X -25
spillage

If the aspect score is less than 9, the aspect can be considered as not significant.

If the score is 9 or greater, the aspect can be considered significant.

Note that each process or activity may have a number of associated aspects and impacts.
DEPARTMENT ANALYSIS MATRIX

The development of subsequent parts of an environmental management

plan must be undertaken at the level of each department.

The departmental concept enables each part of a business to have its own
business definition. For every department, a business definition should
specify the following elements:

 The environmental objectives for each department;

 The resources available to meet the stated objectives;
 The technology to be utilized in product or process changes;

It is also useful to conduct an analysis that helps you to understand the

strengths and weaknesses of your company’s competitors. Use
percentages to identify and weight the relative importance of the key
success factors in your company’s industry.

When all weights are added together, the total should add up to 100. For
each success factor, you must then rate your company and your two or
three major competitors on a scale from 1 (a low or poor competitiveness
rating) to 10 (a high or excellent competitive rating).

Adjusted competitiveness ratings are calculated by multiplying the

weighting factor by the individual company’s ratings. Total company
competitiveness ratings are calculated by adding the adjusted ratings for
each success factor together for each company.

Company Department A Department B

Key
Weightin
environmenta
g factor Rating
Adjusted
Rating
Adjusted
Rating
Adjusted
l indicators rating rating rating

Waste
40 15 600 60 240 13 520
generation

Energy usage 60

Water usage

Air emission

Total
REGISTER OF ENVIRONMENTAL LEGISLATION

It is essential that, as implementer of the EMS, you are fully familiar, and
compliant, with the regulations that apply to the company. A fundamental
part of the planning and implementation process is the creation and
ongoing maintenance of a register of legislation and regulations.

The register is explained below, and for ease of reference your register
should be kept in your environmental documentation folder

A serial number, specified by you, that is used for

Item
recording and shorting purposes.

Regulation Title and brief details of regulation.

Issued by Details of authority that has issued the regulation.

Dated The regulation issue date

Details of your operations, activities or processes

Applicability
subject to the regulation.

The skill to be mastered is to determine which pieces of legislation affect

your company’s operations.

ESTABLISH OBJECTIVES AND TARGETS

An analysis of the responses given in the feedback questionnaire should

provide sufficient information to allow the determination of the company’s
objectives and targets.

The setting of environmental objectives is the main way in which the

company’s environmental performance can be improved.

The objectives set do not need to be quantifiable, but they need to be

realistic and achievable.

The targets are quantifiable, but it may not always be easy to calculate a
target, particularly if this is new.

TABLE OF OBJECTIVES AND TARGETS

The primary objective is to operate and maintain the company in a
manner consistent with the best environmental practices, taking account
of responsibilities to customers, staff, suppliers and the community at
large.

The environmental plan is designed to be open-ended so that new, or

revised, objectives can be added to, or changed within, the program. In
the early stages, this should be on a fairly regular basis

TARGETS

The environmental management plan is designed to be dynamic and

open-ended list of objectives and goals for company to achieve in
accordance with its stated objectives and targets.

The EP should be regularly reviewed and adapted by the environmental

manager in consultation with the environmental working group. Periodic
progress reports should be circulated within the company.

The EP takes the form of a list of targets that is designed to be simple as

possible while showing complete details of goals, methods and
responsibilities.

The active EP target detail should be contained in the environmental

documentation folder.

EP TARGETS LIST

Item A unique item number is assigned to each objective.

The specific objective is described and detailed. Some

objectives may require more information; if so, this will be
Objective
provided separately and a copy placed in the relevant
objective’s folder.

Target E.g. Reduce waste generation by 10 percent.

Goal The projected target date for completion of the objective.

Achieved This is the actual objective achievement date.

Each objective will have a person or group of persons

Responsibilities
designated as being responsible.

Comments This area is reserved for any pertinent comments.

Environmental Audit System

How the environmental manager can use the audit to improve company
environmental management system?

The Environmental Audit System (EAS) are carried out to check the
environmental management system as they are a guide to how effectively
and efficiently the operation runs.

What are objectives of EAS

Check the EMS against the policy, standards, regulations and laws, and
determine:

 The business activities are conforming to the requirements of the

EMS;
 There is employee awareness, together with procedural familiarity;
 There is operational relevance, accuracy and effectiveness of
environmental operating procedures (EOP) and environmental
management procedures (EMP);
 There is proper determination of the adequacy of the EMS by senior
management.

Audit plan